Ex-Dorchester Mass. funeral director sentenced to 3 to 5 years

A former Dorchester funeral home director was sentenced to three to five years in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday to allegations that he improperly disposed of bodies, putting them in self-storage units.

Joseph O'Donnell

Joseph V. O’Donnell was indicted last year after authorities discovered what Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s office alleged was a long-running scheme that sent the wrong remains to some families, left a dozen bodies in boxes and baskets, and cost others nearly $150,000 in advance burial fees that disappeared.

“Desperation led me to make terrible decisions. I never wanted any of this happen,” said O’Donnell, who wore a brown sports jacket, a blue shirt, and a tie in court Wednesday.

In addition to his prison time, O’Donnell will serve five years of probation.

O’Donnell, 57, who had previously pleaded not guilty, said he changed his plea in order to avoid trial in the case charging him with improper disposal of human remains and larceny.

“I am truly sorry,” he added.

Randolph resident April Hopkins, 47, cried outside the courtroom after O’Donnell was sentenced. She said the punishment was not harsh enough.

“What justice did we get?” she said. “He’s going to walk.”

The body of Hopkins’s son, Joshua Wright, 26, was among 12 found in a Weymouth storage locker rented by O’Donnell, the prosecution said.

Hopkins said she had asked for Wright to be cremated after he died in a car crash in Brookline in 2012. She received his ashes, she said, but she was suspicious.

“I have my son’s ashes for two years - carrying, celebrating, everything,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘I feel like this is not my son. These ashes, I don’t want them.’”

She said O’Donnell’s actions hurt her deeply.

“That’s like killing him to me because you mistreated the body,” Hopkins said.

Her daughter, Shadawn Hopkins, 26, said she entrusted O’Donnell to cremate her baby who lived for six hours after being born prematurely in 2011.

Shadawn Hopkins said O’Donnell wrote a letter to the court asserting that she received her daughter’s ashes, but she had not received any verification of his claim.

She said she forgave O’Donnell, but that no punishment could erase what her family has endured.

“Him getting time is not going to fix what he’s done,” Shadawn Hopkins said. “You can sentence him to life, but we’re still going to deal with the pain.”

According to prosecutors, O’Donnell once operated a funeral home on Neponset Avenue in Dorchester, but it was eventually closed and the building entered foreclosure, officials have said.

O’Donnell’s funeral director’s license expired, but he still handled 201 funerals since 2008, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors also alleged that eight different times O’Donnell provided the cremated remains of someone unknown to the families falsely claiming that they were from their loved ones.

He also allegedly stole $150,000 in funeral deposits from clients, according to prosecutors.